Pages tagged “issue 19”

Ground Zero Eros: A love affair blossoms from the rubble of 9/11’s chaotic aftermath

F. Scott Fitzgerald is his father. His uncles are John Cheever, Raymond Carver and Tom Wolfe. His siblings are Bret Easton Ellis and Tama Janowitz. His children include Jonathan Franzen, David Foster Wallace and Jonathan Safron Foer.

The members of this ill-fated literary family have enjoyed extravagant initial success followed by a dramatic tapering-off or critical backlash that threatened to do them in. As McInerney himself expressed in a recent Guardian article about fiction surrounding 9/11, “In America we tend to over-celebrate [precocious first novelists], and then we tend to kill them, figuratively speaking, in part because we expect so much from them after their brilliant beginnings.”

After the brilliant beginning of Bright Lights, Big City, which enshrined him 21 years ago as the spokesman of hip dissipated yuppies, McInerney struggled through his next five novels to live up to those expectations and keep his reputation alive. But he received so much critical backlash that he’d all but given up writing six years ago. Then, in the midst of his writer’s block and emotional ennui, some terrorists flew some airplanes into the World Trade Center towers, and his destiny changed course.

Like so many in Manhattan, McInerney roused himself from his apathy after that cataclysmic event. He volunteered to work for a couple of months feeding the national guardsmen and the rescue workers near Ground Zero, and he heard enough horrific stories and rumors to inspire him into a fresh beginning on a new novel which he called, sardonically, The Good Life.

The novel centers around the amiable Luke McGavock who—like McInerney—is in his 40s and comes from Franklin, Tenn., but has been converted for many years into a thoroughly smart, brash, wealthy New Yorker. He’s made so much money on Wall Street that he’s taken a sabbatical to re-examine his life and his marriage to a beautiful but flighty woman whose major talent is spending his money and attracting even richer suitors.

That fateful morning of September 11, he’d scheduled to meet his accountant at the World Trade Center but was delayed, only to find himself an ash-covered survivor. He happens across a lovely woman named Corrine Calloway, who’s destined to change his life. This is the same Corrine Calloway who was the heroine of Brightness Falls (McInerney’s best novel during his “drought”). She’s the wife of the literary editor Russell Calloway (remember “Nick Carroway” of Gatsby?)—a womanizer already separated from Corrine once and on the verge of doing it again.

Escaping their unfaithful spouses, Luke and Corrine volunteer together at a soup kitchen for rescue workers, just as McInerney had done, and gradually they fall in love. The Good Life, to whatever extent the title bucks irony, relates the sweet story of their romance—from start to finish—with many complications. They both realize how unsatisfying their marriages are, and they both recognize genuine soulmates in each other.

McInerney has always been recognized for the felicity of his prose, and for the most part The Good Life is his best-written novel, although there are passages tinctured with bodice-ripping purple. Kirkus Reviews has already declared the affair between Luke and Corrine an “overheated cliché,” where “the results read like a shotgun marriage between social anthropology and soap opera.”

But this isn’t quite fair to the author. Somewhere during his years of struggling to rise to others’ lofty expectations, McInerney had to choose between continuing to dazzle with original themes, mysteries and social statements, or simply telling a good story, and he wisely chose the latter. The Good Life will entertain, enthrall and touch the heartstrings, which is the most we can ask of any good novel.

It’s also one of the sexiest books of the season, containing gorgeous descriptions of kisses, plus numerous mentions (and two depictions) of far more intimate encounters. The Jayster, as his one-time friend Bret Easton Ellis calls him, gives the impression of never having made love without taking notes to be converted into graphic prose.

If conversation is McInerney’s strong suit, characterization has often been cited as his weakness, so it’s good to see how much we care about Luke and Corrine, and how much we want them to win. But McInerney, being a suave, cool New Yorker, can’t permit a happy ending, and that’s the one serious flaw in this otherwise charming novel.

In Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, the oft-repeated refrain “So it goes” follows the death of anyone (or anything; the funniest line in the book is when it’s used for a beer gone flat). In The Good Life, the refrain is, “It is to die for,” or simply “It is to die,” the author’s common catch-phrase for something wonderful that, by allusion, also extends to the near-3,000 deaths of 9/11. Sardonic or not, The Good Life “is to die for,” an enjoyable read that may revive McInerney’s dusty standing.

Miri Ben-Ari knows her look—a willowy frame with olive skin and a mess of soft brown curls— completely contradicts her energy. Musically, the Israeli-born, classically trained violinist wields a beautifully carved instrument, but she considers her technique “dirty”—channeling a rapper. In fact, one of her most recent collaborations included a high-profile stint writing and performing string arrangements for Kanye West’s The College Dropout. In conversation she exudes the directness of an army soldier (she served her mandatory two years in the Israeli army), intentionally bypassing her background and pushing the conversation toward music.

Still, examining her childhood in Ramat Gan, just outside Tel Aviv, proves crucial to understanding her affection for rap and hip-hop’s rawness. “[Israel is] very hip-hop as far as having real talk—being sincere, being direct, saying whatever the f—— you want to say, the whole mentality. It doesn’t matter how educated you are,” she explains. “I think it’s because of the struggle that my people went through. We have the worst situation, so we go through the military, which gives you a military head. Israel is rough… hardcore.”

Now she’s translating hip-hop in her own style with her solo effort, The Hip-Hop Violinist—a moniker given to her by former Fugee Wyclef Jean. With guests like West, Fabolous, Lil’ Mo and John Legend, Ben-Ari samples Middle Eastern-tinged rap, motivational R&B and even a portion of Dvo˘rák’s New World Symphony. Ben-Ari is aware her spin on hip-hop will raise an eyebrow or two. Still, she’s relishing the challenge to musical barriers with consistent honesty. “It’s part of crossing the lines,” she says. “Whenever you’re real, if you say something that you’re not supposed to say, you don’t really follow protocol. And people are like ‘Did you just say that?’

“What I do is the same. ‘Did you just say that on a violin?’ Damn right I did.”

Exquisite melodrama from the genius of modern German cinema

Edited by Fassbinder from a miniseries nearly twice the length, this darkly comic spin on Flaubert’s Madame Bovary concerns a small-town German civil servant, Bolwieser, who is cuckolded by his lusty wife, Hanni. Under the guise of investing the money she brought into their marriage (a fact she throws in his face at every opportunity), Hanni moves from one affair to another, while the town snickers in delight. Drawing equally on inspiration from Fritz Lang (including Bolwieser’s uncanny resemblance to Peter Lorre’s tortured child murderer in M) and Douglas Sirk (to whom he’d paid homage several years earlier in Ali: Fear Eats the Soul), Fassbinder crafts a fascinating examination of passion and pettiness, with Elisabeth Trissenaar’s powerhouse performance at its potent core.

When John Hiatt sings, in 1987’s “Memphis in the Meantime,” “At least we can get a decent meal / down at the Rendezvous,” he’s not referring to some toney French bistro at the far end of Beale Street. He’s talking barbecue, baby, specifically Charlie Vergos’ Rendezvous, without question the most famous of Memphis’ many spectacular pork palaces, and arguably the best.

Which goes to show that, in addition to being a mean guitarist and songwriter, Hiatt knows his pig.

Whether he knows his barbecue, on the other hand, is another matter entirely. Because as much as the Rendezvous is home to some of the best tasting ribs in the southeast, purists question whether the Vergoses even cook authentic barbecue, since the ribmasters at the Memphis institution preside over, not a traditional wood-fired pit, but a charcoal grill. And they cook their ribs naked, adding the famous Rendezvous seasoning only after the pig is off the grill, eschewing sauce completely.

But as you’ll surely know if you’ve ever chowed down on brisket in Houston, pulled pork in Little Rock and ribs at the Rendezvous, there are almost as many approaches to barbecue as there are barbecuers. And every single one will be defended passionately by its adherents.

CONTROVERSY #1: FUEL

Whether you’re in Texas or North Carolina, the key to almost all barbecue is slow cooking. (One of the few exceptions being the Rendezvous, where Nick Vergos freely admits that they use “the fastest method we can, simply to be able to cook the 800 racks of ribs we serve nightly.”) Slow cooking means indirect heat, either from wood (most common) or gas (most controversial).

While few pit masters, professionals and self-styled experts alike, would ever admit to using gas to fuel their flames, Steven Raichlen, author of the Barbecue Bible cookbooks and host of PBS’ Barbecue University, notes that 68 percent of Americans prefer and use a gas grill. Of course, chances are that most of these folk are Flipping burgers rather than gently coaxing flavor from briskets or ribs, so let’s give the edge to wood and move along.

CONTROVERSY #2: MEAT

After fuel, the next issue is food, as in beef, pork or chicken.

With apologies to all the poultry lovers out there, fowl just doesn’t fly when it comes to barbecue. Sure, most barbecue joints will offer some sort of chicken, and a few will go as far as to list turkey or other birds on the menu, but those are just for the timid. Real barbecue, most will agree, is beef and pork, the former in Texas and the latter in Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia and the Carolinas, and both in Kansas City.

CONTROVERSY #3: TECHNIQUE

Meat and fuel now decided, the remaining question concerns technique, and it’s here that things get the most contentious. Because for a fairly simple cooking style (spice it, smoke it, sauce it) barbecue has a whole lot of variations—from which cut of meat to use (brisket versus ribs, mostly) and when to rub on the spice (before or after cooking) to the sauce’s composition (tomato or mustard or vinegar base). Even whether to chop, slice or pull the meat after cooking becomes an issue in barbecue.

TRIAL BY FIRE

As is the case for most controversies gastronomic, the best way to figure things out is to try the variations yourself, and here—ironically—Northeasterners are at a bit of an advantage. Because there’s no real barbecue tradition above the North Carolina border, barbecue showcases like Boston’s Redbones and New York’s Blue Smoke offer a much wider variety of styles than you’ll ever see in the south. Just try to find Texas-style brisket at Durham, N.C.’s Bullock’s Bar-B-Cue or a slaw-topped pork sandwich at Angelo’s in Fort Worth, Texas. You never will, but you can get both at Syracuse, N.Y.’s Dinosaur Bar-B-Q. But at these northern establishments, you can only get an approximation of the regional styles, and as far as the experience goes, it’s not the same.

For a taste of the real deal you’ll need to run the barbecue belt, and loosen your own belt a few notches while doing so. Start in Texas, perhaps with the famously sauce-less beef brisket at Kreuz Market in Lockhart, before heading over to Little Rock, Ark., for a sliced-pork sandwich at the venerable Sim’s Barbecue. Next, a run north to Kansas City is in order for a pork-rib lunch at the legendary Arthur Bryant’s, followed by classic Memphis ribs back south at the Rendezvous. Finally, head east to North Carolina to experience what may be the fiercest rivalry in barbecue: the Eastern-N.C. style with seasoned vinegar sauce (as at Pete Jones’ Skylight Inn in Ayden), versus Western-N.C.-style barbecue, also served with a vinegar-based but slightly tomato-y sauce at Lexington Barbecue in Lexington.

After that, if the classics haven’t done you in, point your belly south to the next tier of barbecue states, making your way through South Carolina, where mustard-based sauces dominate, and Georgia and Alabama, where things start to redden and vinegar up again. Pause for a plate of barbecue shrimp at the Funky Butt in New Orleans—a dish that has nothing to do with traditional barbecue, but a whole lot to do with butter, spice and immense flavor—before starting it all over again back in Texas.

Then head home to embark on a vegetarian diet for the next month, secure in the knowledge that you have fully experienced what may well be the perfect American food.

FOLLOW THE SMOKE TO THE COUNTRY'S BEST 'CUE JOINTS

» Charlie Vergos’ Rendezvous, 52 S. Second St., Memphis, Tenn.; 901.523.2746
» Blue Smoke, 116 E. 27th St., New York, N.Y.; 212.447.7733
» Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, 246 W. Willow St., Syracuse, N.Y.; 315.476.4937
» Bullock’s Bar B Cue, 3330 Quebec Dr., Durham, N.C.; 919.383.3211
» Angelo’s, 2533 White Settlement Rd., Fort Worth, Texas; 817.332.0357
» Kreuz Market, 619 N. Colorado St., Lockhart, Texas; 512.398.2361
» Sim’s Barbeque, 7601 Geyer Springs Rd., Little Rock, Ark.; 501.372.1148
» Arthur Bryant’s, 1727 Brooklyn Ave., Kansas City, Mo.; 816.231.1123
» Skylight Inn, 1501 S. Lee St., Ayden N.C.; 252.746.4113
» Lexington Barbecue, Hwy. 29-70 S., Lexington, N.C.; 336.249.9814
» Dreamland Bar-B-Que Ribs, 5535 15th Ave. E., Tuscaloosa, Ala.; 205.758.8135

Hometown: New York
Fun fact: Julian once worked in a bottling factory where he watched the bottles like Laverne & Shirley.
Why he’s worth watching: Received a ‘seal of approval’ from Randy Newman and Bonnie Raitt; co-wrote for Norah Jones’ album Feels Like Home. Norah sings backup on his latest.
For fans of: Greg Brown, David Wilcox, Randy Newman

Richard Julian’s Slow New York (his fourth album and first on a major label after a stint as an independent) delivers bluesy, acoustic-spun impressions of the seemingly mundane, finding beauty and heartbreak in everyday occurrences. “I had a song on my first record about a friend of mine who had AIDS,” explains Julian. “A situation once had to have an exclamation point in order for it to be worthy. Now I tend to capture life more the way it is as opposed to the way it is every once in awhile when things are very dramatic.”

Julian’s life as a singer/songwriter has had its drama. After a one-year stint playing piano in Las Vegas at age 18, he moved to New York not knowing a soul and slowly ingratiated himself, meeting the musicians who would later flesh out his vignettes. He eventually plugged in (or unplugged in) with a group of likeminded singer/songwriters at the Living Room, the Lower East Side venue known for artists like Norah Jones and Jesse Harris.

Julian and Jones eventually became friends, with Julian opening a number of dates on her Come Away With Me tour. Julian released his first two albums on Blackbird/Sire Records only to self-release his third, Good Life. Now back with Manhattan Records, a division of EMI, he’s philosophical about his chances of reaching a wider audience.

“All of us are dealt a deck of cards and it’s how you play them. I’ve seen rich kids come up in this business with all the money to make recordings and they can’t get anywhere because they don’t know how to focus on their music. And you see people who are incredibly talented who don’t have a lot of resources and who struggle a lot. But it’s a deck of cards. Not always the best deck of cards wins. Some people drop out of the game.”

Mark Kozelek knew weeks before the release of Tiny Cities—the new album by his band Sun Kil Moon that’s completely composed of Modest Mouse covers—that it was getting an unusual reception. “It’s somehow acceptable for a guy like me to cover people who are dead or legendary,” says the former Red House Painter, who’s retooled songs from artists as diverse as John Denver and the Bon Scott-led AC/DC. “But when you cover a guy who’s maybe ten years younger than you, who hasn’t been making records as long as you have, there’s a different feeling about it.”

The “guy” in question is Isaac Brock, Modest Mouse’s singer and songwriter, known for his staccato vocals and mad-as-hell delivery. Kozelek, on the other hand, is recognized for a soulful voice and intricate acoustic-guitar work—hence the surprise. “I feel like I’ve been on the defensive,” says Kozelek, who kept the album secret until its completion. “People love the record, but they still keep asking, ‘Why?’”

It began with a 2003 Modest Mouse show at The Fillmore in San Francisco. Kozelek was immediately taken aback. “You know, I see a lot of shows, and I’m not often blown away,” he says. “But there was just this intensity and sort of danger element going on up there that was really incredible.”

He started working a few Modest Mouse songs into Sun Kil Moon shows, and considered recording some of them for an EP—but instead kept going until he had 11 covers of mostly older, lesser-known songs.

Hints of the original Modest Mouse melodies exist in some of these tracks, but others seem like completely different tunes with only the lyrics intact. Kozelek says he didn’t plan to radically alter the songs, but simply put his own touches on them as he would any music he plays. For example, Modest Mouse’s “Exit Does Not Exist,” full of thumping drums and Brock’s screams, is “just a different universe” from Kozelek’s style, he says. So, in the Sun Kil Moon version, the drums are replaced by quiet guitar, Brock’s exploding anger by Kozelek’s melancholy intonation.

This forces listeners to not only rethink the songs, but also to focus on Brock’s lyrics, which are amazing, Kozelek says. “People already into Modest Mouse are probably aware [Brock] is gifted and he’s a great writer. But for people who aren’t… hopefully this record will bring attention to the fact that this guy is really good.”

And what does he think Brock will say about the album? Kozelek sent the band a copy, but hasn’t heard anything yet. (Paste’s request for a comment was politely declined.) “I don’t know how he’ll feel about it, just like I don’t know how I would feel about it if an artist did 10 or 11 Red House Painters covers.” He laughs. “It might freak me out.”

“It’s hard being in Rilo Kiley with Jenny, because she’s such a good vocalist and a beautiful singer that you don’t want to sing because you can’t match up,” says Blake Sennett with a laugh.

We’re discussing his bold vocal turns on Sun, Sun, Sun, the second album by The Elected, his band with Rilo Kiley drummer Jason Boesel. “I think I used to be more scared to sing,” he says, “but [The Elected] toured a bunch and I got a little more used to singing. I didn’t have Tiger Woods watching me putt, you know?”

In distinct contrast to Lewis’ stripped-down Rabbit Fur Coat, Sennett leads his band through a lushly layered song cycle in the classic California-pop tradition, each track leaping with detail and road-weary sentiment.

“I guess we wanted to make something a little more in line with the stuff we grew up listening to, like The Band and Neil Young and early Grateful Dead and this Eagles’ record my mom used to play a lot when I was growing up,” he says, describing an album whose sonic expanse and rich analog production forgets punk ever happened.

“If that stuff is floating around in your head long enough, you should just go ahead and play with it. Once there was a crack in the dam, the dam broke, and we ended up putting lots of saxophones in and jacking up the harmonies.”

Most singer/songwriters spend their formative years in bars, coffeehouses or smoke-filled dorm rooms. James Blunt took a different path, spending four years in the British army, including a stint as a peacekeeper in Kosovo.

Blunt, whose high voice and strong melodies are reminiscent of Cat Stevens, Elliott Smith and early Elton John, spends much of his debut Back to Bedlam focused on personal concerns like love and friendship. But he closes the album with the stunning “No Bravery,” a ballad about the horrors of war that he wrote in the barracks in Kosovo.

We asked Blunt for five things he learned in the Army that prepared him for a life in rock ’n’ roll:

1. Don’t get nervous

“People always ask if I get nervous performing, but I don’t find it nerve-wracking at all,” Blunt says. “It’s just singing. No one’s in danger if I forget the words, so what’s to worry about?”

2. Always act like you’re in charge

“When I was in the army, I used to stand up on a platform and convince soldiers I knew what the hell was going on,” he says. “Now, I do that onstage.”

3. Keep your space clean

“For years, I traveled around in a tank with all of my life possessions; now that tank is called a tour bus,” Blunt says with a laugh. “But in either one you have to keep things neat, so I have daily morning inspections. If any band member fails, they give me 50 push-ups.”

4. Think clearly at all times

“People think the army is very regimented, but you actually have a lot of freedom as to how you get a mission done, so you have to be self- motivated,” he says. “In that sense, it’s not that different from being a musician. You have to always keep pushing yourself to reach your goals.”

5. Learn how to escape

“I used to work in reconnaissance, so I got very good at hiding in bushes,” Blunt says. “That can be very useful when dealing with overzealous fans. The Army also teaches you discretion, which comes in handy on the road.”

Recent find uncovers two jazz legends in masterful form

Billed under the auspicious title “Thanksgiving Jazz,” this crate-digging find must’ve felt like gold to Larry Appelbaum. In January 2005 the Library of Congress Recording Labs supervisor unearthed unmarked tapes from a 1957 show featuring Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie, Ray Charles, and Monk with Trane. The sax player had blown his previous gig with Miles Davis due to his nagging heroin addiction, and was just beginning his infamous investigation of Buddhism. His redefinition of “cool” begins with sets like this, effervescently decorating Monk’s ivory-tinkering on “Monk’s Mood,” “Evidence” and “Nutty.” Monk’s trademark freeform changes helped develop Trane’s dexterity—hear the evidence on “Bye-Ya,” where he inserts phrases from other classics. Filled out by bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik and drummer Shadow Wilson, these 52 minutes represent the turning point of modern jazz. Consider this an archeological masterpiece, as sonically enjoyable as it is historically crucial.

All I wanna do… is write good songs

Sheryl Crow is all grown up. She ditched the rocker-chick image long ago and now returns with her fifth studio album, Wildflower—a collection of introspective songs that’s heavy on the flower and hardly wild. Some listeners will cry, “dull!” but Crow remains consistent with almost flawless production, catchy melodies and an undeniably capable voice. She waxes sentimental on vulnerable piano ballad “Always On Your Side” and the acoustic title track, flaunting her vocal range, which has grown with age. Standout track “I Don’t Wanna Know” typifies the album’s demeanor with mopey lyrics and a slow yet catchy melody. Crow reminds us she’s still radio-friendly with “Live It Up”—Wildflower’s token pop ditty, a la “Soak Up The Sun” or “All I Wanna Do”—and popular single “Good Is Good.” Unexpected moments include the dreamy, synth-drenched “Chances Are” (“I was lost inside a daydream / Swimming through the saline”) and the Beatles-inspired “Where Has All The Love Gone,” complete with chiming piano and sunshine harmonies. Crow might not be breaking musical ground, but good is good, and Wildflower’s sure to grow on you.

Exhaustive two-DVD set chronicles peak of T. Rextasy

Twenty-eight years after the untimely death of T. Rex frontman Marc Bolan, this 1972 film gets the re-release it deserves. At a near-overwhelming 325 minutes, the comprehensive two-disc set offers a mix of concert footage and surrealistic vignettes. There’s a man dressed as a dormouse driving a red convertible with the characteristically top-hatted Bolan in the back. Waving a fly swatter, the bushy-haired songwriter looks like glam’s answer to Willy Wonka. Suddenly, a midget materializes and eats the rearview mirror. Later, Bolan jams in a basement studio in London’s West End with Elton John on piano and Ringo Starr—the film’s director and aforementioned dormouse—on drums. Erratic though it may be, Born to Boogie is an engaging document of the short-lived period when T. Rextasy ruled the music world.

Stephen Malkmus’ charming progeny make good

Comparing Manhattan indie heroes Sam Champion to Pavement is totally fair, albeit silly. Songwriter Noah Chernin’s laconic urban warble can barely mask his cunning melodies and attentive constructions. “We like it slow / and so it goes,” Chernin chants on the title track, which folds from a lazy jangle to a molassified outro. “You Can’t See The Stars In This Town,” meanwhile, is swayingly citybound C&W, affixed with a stunning Dixieland crescendo. Producer (and Guster drummer) Brian Rosenworcel’s orchestrations tease out Chernin’s uncluttered hooks with subliminally thick grace. Concise and affable, Slow Rewind is an impressive debut.

A brighter shade of pale from the kings of pop twilight

Like Galaxie 500 and Spain before them, The Clientele specialize in crepuscular rock: music that strolls empty, melancholic streets and lingers in lonely bedsits. Its first two discs—a singles collection and a languid long-player—proved solid efforts, but the production’s lo-fi murk lent the music a feeling of sameness. While the London-based trio’s latest disc isn’t a bold departure, it boasts a sunnier, more direct sound, thanks to Brian O’Shaughnessy’s deft production. As a result, Alisdair MacLean’s vocals emerge more defined, and the band sounds fresher. The song quality has also improved, with even some modest uptempo numbers popping up, like “My Own Face Inside the Trees” and the wan, dry cheer of “E.M.P.T.Y.” It’s an instant late-night classic that’s a pleasure to stay awake for.

Texas duo weaves moody, moving country noir

Texas husband/wife duo Steven and Sherilyn Collins, collectively known as Deadman, sculpt austere country-noir songs filled with nightmarish visions, Biblical imagery and apocalyptic dread. But there’s hope and compassion, too. Unlike the similarly minded Handsome Family, The Collinses eschew the macabre in favor of a moving, eloquent call to human connection and relationship.

Steven sounds a bit like Bono in full Rattle and Hum gospel mode, especially on the bluesy “Won’t Be Long,” while Sherilyn’s sweetly hushed soprano recalls latter-day Emmylou Harris, particularly on the ruminative waltz “Slow Dance.” The secret weapon is producer Mark Howard, a Daniel Lanois disciple, who slathers on the reverb, coaxes atmospheric coos and sighs out of pedal-steel guitarist Todd Pertll, and creates a genuinely spooky, windswept Western soundscape.

Steven Collins claims his band is called Deadman because it’s a reminder that we’re all going to die, and a challenge to do something worthwhile in the face of mortality. He’s met the challenge this time by creating a shimmering, iridescent album. As befitting eternal ghosts, these songs will haunt you long after they fade from the speakers.

Retro-minded indie rockers work on their Sabbath

When pondering the prolificacy of indie rock, one must think fondly of Stephen McBean. The bearded, raspy-tongued songwriter serves as frontman of all bands geologically named on label Jagjaguwar—from his lo-fi, oft-sexual songs with The Pink Mountaintops, to his work with Black Mountain. Fortunately we benefit from such prodigious output, as evidenced by the latter band’s debut LP. Starting off impressively with the horn-drenched über-hipness of “Modern Music,” and running the gamut of ’70s influences from the Stones (“No Satisfaction”) to Sabbath (“Druganaut”), Black Mountain indulges that old-school rock ’n’ roll craving.

At once grim and grand, The Standard makes electrified arena rock in miniature

In an era of mannered eclecticism, The Standard prefers to ride a cohesive mid-tempo vibe—any track on its consistently brilliant fourth album is a digest of the whole album’s tics. Take opener “Red Drop”—Tim Putnam’s sincere, slightly strangled vocals creak along with a passing resemblance to The Tragically Hip’s Gordon Downie. Repetitive, lilting guitar chords unfurl in long, fuzz-veiled lines, underpinned by a twinkling piano phrase and richly textured percussion that echoes and rattles with uncommon precision. Electronic fillips lurk in the background, unassuming yet quietly majestic. The ballads array the same elements in slower, softer configurations: “Not Asleep” finds Putnam’s winsome voice drifting through nervously insistent drums and watercolor washes of starry melody. Then the piano appears, shimmering, and a group of chords lift up like plaintive hands. The Standard pays close attention to detail without losing sight of the song; it recognizes the power of restraint and casts anthem rock in a counterintuitive yet winning posture of supplication.

Pop/rock debut with great idea, uninspired songs

The members of California-based Tremolo have a generous plan for the royalties they’ll receive from sales of their newest album: donate 50 percent to a charity of their fans’ choosing. Unfortunately, the evidence of a social consciousness proves scant within Tremolo’s songs— romantic lyrics populating garden-variety love ballads. Songwriter Justin Dillon cites U2 as his initial inspiration, and that band’s influence—at least musically—pervades Love, occasionally in a cloying fashion. The songs are FM-radio ready, with slick production and hooks galore, but are wholly unremarkable. Of course, rock clichés have never hurt a band’s chances at popularity, so here’s hoping Tremolo’s benevolence makes a more lasting impact than its music.

Stickin’ It To The ‘Mang’: Rap trio attempts grand statement about institutionalized racism

The trio Little Brother—rappers Big Pooh and Phonte with DJ 9th Wonder—has officially popped off, and finally, N.C. rap has a respectable national foothold, toppling Petey Pablo from a very tiny pedestal. Emerging from a larger crew called the Justus League in 2001, the trio built regional buzz with frequent performances and an honest approach—eschewing glamorous fantasy, they rapped about their day jobs, insecurities and dreams. After generating Internet buzz, Little Brother signed a deal with Oakland label ABB and released its debut, which sparked enough national interest for 9th Wonder to sell beats to Jay-Z and Destiny’s Child.

On the group’s major-label sophomore effort, Little Brother acknowledges that the stakes are higher: “Niggas is listening now, so I better have something to say to ’em.” In meeting these expectations, Little Brother hunkers down in its familiar style, and if the musical content of The Minstrel Show could be described with one word, it’s “solid.” Lyrically, Pooh and Te split time between textbook braggadocio rhymes and inspirational raps about the perils of coming up in the rap game from a middle-class background; each is an intelligent MC, opting for substance over flash. They admirably resist the urge to cash in on Southern rap’s current cachet—there’s no affected Southern slang, no ad libs or crispy-fried crunk inflections, no “jawns” or “mangs.” The beats are serviceable and melodic, if a bit rote. On “Still Lives Through,” there’s the line, “Today’s fan is tomorrow’s rap critic / One day they giving you the thumbs up, the next / They telling 9th to go and switch his drums up.” Maybe the criticism is more friendly advice than hating: All good producers have a recognizable aesthetic, but 9th might’ve painted himself into a corner, as the entire album relies so heavily on soul breaks, tinny synths and, especially, the same flat, compressed snare, that it starts to blur by the end. Thematically, The Minstrel Show lambastes a rap establishment where white powerbrokers get rich exploiting black performers. Some rap critics have blasted the group for being hypocritical, for recycling A Tribe Called Quest in The Year That Kanye Made and trying to pass it off as revolutionary. This is due to Little Brother’s heavy-handedness—they’d have done better to omit the didactic skits and make their point by tacit counterexample. “All For You” is a humane investigation of paternity’s challenges in the vein of OutKast’s “Ms. Jackson,” and the respectful come-ons of “Slow it Down” are the opposite of the Ying Yang Twins’ portrayal of the black man as a misogynistic sexual predator. If it’s too naive to say Little Brother is altruistically crusading for social justice, it’s too skeptical to say they’re cynically exploiting their audience’s sense of self-righteousness. The trio’s screed stems from a complex mixture of both impulses, and in the end what we get is a group of ambitious young men grappling with large concepts and trying to articulate their place in the game.

“This is the most honest that I’ve gotten. This is as close [as I’ve come] to who I think I am,” says Rilo Kiley’s Jenny Lewis of her first solo album, pausing for a pensive moment. “That’s true right now, anyway,” she laughs. “I might change a few years down the road.”

Though elements of country, soul and gospel have poked through the seams of Lewis’ Rilo Kiley songs since she and guitarist Blake Sennett formed the band in 1998, the homespun intimacy of the stripped-down Rabbit Fur Coat might surprise those who only know her as the photogenic frontwoman of the band that opened for Coldplay. But to call it a departure seems inaccurate, as Lewis contends this album’s roots are buried deep inside her musical DNA, ingrained in the formative musical experiences of her childhood.

“I think there were a couple records that maybe because of the time in my life when I heard them for the first time, they still resonate with me, because I think of happy times growing up,” she says, explaining the inspiration for the warm, organic tones of her new record. “Laura Nyro [and] LaBelle’s Gonna Take a Miracle record was played a lot in the house growing up, and I was always fascinated with the backup vocals … And then, more recently, New Morning by Bob Dylan is one of my favorite records. Obviously, he’s awesome, but I love that one sound, as opposed to all of his other records.”

Recorded in 10 days (with first takes and spontaneity emphasized), Rabbit Fur Coat started taking shape after Lewis realized the album’s title track—a dreamlike marriage of Lewis Carroll imagery and Bobbi Gentry storytelling—wouldn’t fit on Rilo Kiley’s 2004 breakthrough, More Adventurous.

“That was the first of a batch of new songs that I started to write, really, without any intention. I just didn’t know where they’d go,” she explains. “However, I did know that there is quite a long period of time between when you write a song and record it, and I thought there was going to be a long time until the next Rilo Kiley record and that it might be a good opportunity to record some songs. And then Conor [Oberst] started his label a couple of years ago and said that if I ever wanted to make a solo record, he wanted to put it out, which I remember thinking was kind of far-fetched at the time. But remembering that, I thought, well, I have these songs and I should do something with them.”

A Collaborative ‘Solo Project’

With producer Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes, Rilo Kiley) and singer/songwriter M. Ward at the helm for this record, other friends were brought in to enhance the sonic backdrop. Lewis even drew some inspiration from another all-star project, enlisting Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard, Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst and M. Ward to trade verses on Traveling Wilburys classic “Handle With Care.”

As much as the album benefits from its collaborative spirit, Lewis remains the dominant personality; her songwriting has never been so boldly autobiographical. “It’s hard to talk about,” she says, sounding frustrated. “I should have prepped myself a little better for these personal questions. It’s hard to talk about those songs that way, especially when the songs are personal. I haven’t found a great way to deflect those questions yet. Like when someone asks me, ‘Is that song about your mother?’ I could say, ‘No, it’s about your mother,’” she laughs, then trails into an awkward pause. “Well, I can say that the part about my parents getting back together again isn’t true, sadly. That’s the dream of every child of divorce.”

Apart from her achievements in songwriting, Lewis says that simply realizing she can make music outside the comfort zone of Rilo Kiley was an act of empowerment.

“I now know that I can do it alone,” she admits. “I never thought I could before. I had worked with Blake as my partner for so long, and I knew that he could do it alone, because he makes his own records. But I always thought, if Blake ever decides to leave the band, what would I do? I knew I could sing and play the guitar, but I didn’t know if I could make a record. It’s not that I don’t want to go back and work with Blake, it’s just a different process. And it’s really great to have both options. For once, I was happy, and I didn’t look back.”

Legendary guitarist’s new record stumbles due to head-scratching collaborations

Santana’s 2000 Grammy-winning Supernatural—full of inspired collaborations with artists like Rob Thomas and Wyclef Jean—prompted several generations of music fans to make him the biggest comeback since Lazarus. His newest album, All That I Am, adopts a similar formula but with messy results. You won’t be feelin’ the first single, a gooey pop duet with Michelle Branch called “I’m Feeling You.” And you won’t be believing some of the pointless pairings. Sean Paul with Joss Stone? Metallica’s Kirk Hammett with pedal-steel jam-master Robert Randolph? Meanwhile, Santana himself just gets lost in the hullabaloo, going hip hop with Mary J. Blige and OutKast’s Big Boi, going blues-pop earnest with Mexi-soul mates Los Lonely Boys and letting Steven Tyler cheese it up on a power ballad. Tellingly, the only satisfying songs here are the two Spanish-language tracks that kick off the album with booty-shaking brilliance. Carlos, ain’t it time to come home again?

Countrypolitan alive and well and living on Dualtone

The Moon Was Blue is more than just a return to form for the venerable Bare, who’s proven one of the most daring and iconoclastic country artists in the business for more than 40 years. It’s the best record he’s made since his 1981 Rodney Crowell-produced As Is, and it picks up right where he left off, blurring musical boundaries with a casual disdain for convention. From the plaintive title track to the hillbilly Latin of “I Am an Island” and the shattered waltz of “My Heart Cries for You,” Bare’s voice is all leather and butter, the songs transported out of a late-’60s Ray Price session as Daniel Lanois might’ve conducted them. The Moon Was Blue is haunted and heartbroken like any self-respecting country album should be; but quality heartache like this has been a long, lonely time coming.

(Above: The Five Obstructions)

You’ve probably noticed I write for a music-and-film magazine. And the fact that music comes first in that list is fine with me. I love music, and it has a lot in common with cinema, especially in the Paste world, where the auteur is a songwriter, of sorts, and the songwriter is an auteur.

But as similar as they can be, film and music occupy pretty different parts of our lives, by their very nature. A dedicated music fan may set aside time to do nothing but listen to an album, but most of us listen while we’re doing something else—working, driving or cleaning house—or at least we can, whereas movies demand the attention of both our ears and eyes. Maybe this explains why we spend less time with movies: they don’t lend themselves to multi-tasking.

And maybe this also explains why pop music is designed for repeated listens but Netflix and Blockbuster have built businesses out of loaning you a movie for what’s usually a one-time experience. If it’s a really good movie, you may want to see it again one day, but not as often as you’d play your favorite new album.

Something about the human brain seems to like repetition in music, especially when it has just a touch of variety every now and then—a remix, a cover, a key change in the bridge—and even though we experience music and film so differently I think we like repetition when we’re watching movies, too.

Which finally brings me to my topic: remakes. I know that as a movie critic I’m supposed to denounce them to the ends of the earth as evidence that Hollywood studios have no originality, no cajones to try something new and so little respect for their audiences that they foist the same junk on them over and over again.

But I’m less interested in why Hollywood likes remakes than why audiences like them, which we clearly do, lining up in numbers to see them. From that side of the equation, I can’t think of any reason to knock them. When people are genuinely elated to hear about a new film adaptation of, say, The Lord of the Rings, I think they’re excited for two reasons: they love the story and they love the medium. And what could possibly be wrong with that?

Even great filmmakers have remade movies. Not under duress, not in a time of weakness, but by choice. Alfred Hitchcock surely could’ve made any movie he wanted when he remade The Man Who Knew Too Much, his own movie. Long before that, in 1929 at the end of the silent era, he made two versions of a movie called Blackmail, one a silent and one a talkie, sharing most of the same footage. Maybe he was hedging his bets in a time of great technological change, but what a fun exercise that must’ve been.

Stranger than the two Blackmails are the two versions of The Blue Angel that Josef von Sternberg made a year later, one in German and one in English. The strange part is that he made the two simultaneously, with the same sets and the same actors. They’d shoot a scene in German and then shoot it again in English, so the result really is two entirely different but very similar movies. (Ask anyone who’s seen them both; the German one is better.)

These alternate versions are akin to now-common “directors’ cuts,” but for a different variation, take the popular Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu who not only remade a few of his movies—loosely, exploring them from different angles—but also spent his latter years making movies about themes he’d explored many times before. Far from simply repeating himself, Ozu made each film fresh, as if the themes of fathers and daughters, marriage and family, still had untapped potential even after all those earlier films. And he was right.

Even movies that aren’t strictly remakes may still be working within a familiar set of unwritten rules. We call them genres, of course, and while not every movie needs to fit into one, those that do usually follow the rules but twist them in some unexpected way, just a bit, so that viewers are on solid footing but get a few surprises.

In fact, the brain’s affinity for repetition and slight variation may be as important to filmmakers and musicians as it is to the people who enjoy their work. Many artists—of all stripes—find that their creativity kicks into high gear when they’re backed into a corner, for the same reason that necessity is the mother of invention.

This phenomenon is on full display in Lars von Trier’s The Five Obstructions (now on DVD). Von Trier is the controversial Danish filmmaker who’s been called sadistic even by his fans. After all, he’s the guy who put Nicole Kidman in chains, Björk on death row and Emily Watson in situations you wouldn’t wish on anyone. But in The Five Obstructions he may have met his match: a fellow filmmaker named Jorgen Leth who made a short film in 1967 called The Perfect Human, which von Trier particularly admires. For Obstructions, von Trier forces Leth (a willing participant) to remake The Perfect Human five times, each time with a different set of constraints. The first obstruction: no shot can be longer than half a second, Leth must shoot the film in Cuba, and he can’t build any sets. “That’s just the first obstruction?” Leth worries.

But his worry spawns a brilliant streak of creativity. As adept as von Trier is at applying technical and psychological pressure, Leth does him one better by shining at every turn, even when he looks like he wants to beat his head against the wall.

Repeating yourself without repeating yourself takes some doing, but I think it’s a worthwhile approach to filmmaking. Maybe a part of me still cringes when I hear a Hollywood studio is going to remake yet another Japanese thriller only two years after the original was released, thus capitalizing on the walls around the theaters in this country that make foreign films seem so distant. But it’s not the remaking itself that I object to, so much as the reason.

Remake those movies if you want. Retell those stories. But don’t think it lets you off the hook. Don’t expect to phone it in. If you’re telling our favorite stories, put some effort into it. Respect the malleability of the medium and the power of the story’s constraints, or else we’re going to look at you and your movie the way we look at someone who can’t tell a joke. If you’re going to cover Bob Dylan and The Beatles, at least turn to Jimi Hendrix and Joe Cocker for inspiration.

The Fugitive Kind - 3 Stars
Burn! - 3 Stars
The Missouri Breaks - 4 Stars
A Dry White Season - 3 Stars

Four lesser-known Brando vehicles get bare-bones DVD treatment

While there was always a hint of aloof distance in Marlon Brando’s performances (a quality that no doubt added to his mystique), it intensified as time wore on. In his mediocre films, it came off as disinterest, as if he was too bored by the material to care. But in the more interesting work, his languid eccentricity made for impossibly compelling portrayals. These four titles (arriving on DVD for the first time), while not essential, had enough merit to get Brando’s dander up. The Fugitive Kind (1959), while not as nuanced as his career-launcher—A Streetcar Named Desire—is still an engaging Tennessee Williams adaptation. Burn! (’69) was a disappointing follow-up to Gillo Pontecorvo’s masterpiece The Battle of Algiers, but Brando dives in with conviction as the British apparatchik sent to exploit rebellion on a Caribbean island. The best of the bunch is Arthur Penn’s The Missouri Breaks (’75), a deconstructionist Western with Brando as a ruthless (and subtly psychotic) “regulator” brought in to eliminate a gang of horse thieves led by Jack Nicholson. A Dry White Season (’89) finds Brando in a cameo turn as a wry but principled South African lawyer. All four discs are devoid of special features, which is truly a missed opportunity to explore worthy performances by one of film’s most enigmatic stars.

A heaping helping of the King of Suspense

In his seminal 1983 biography of Hitchcock, Donald Spoto posited that the director’s genius for suspense and the macabre was ?red by his own phobias and obsessions. According to Spoto, the director’s malevolent wit manifested itself offscreen in mean-spirited practical jokes, while his fear of sickness and poverty dogged him his entire life. So while he left few records and granted few candid interviews, Spoto suggested “Hitchcock’s films were indeed his notebooks and journals.” If this is true, the 14 films in this collection dive deeply into a brilliant, twisted mind. Consider Rope, his extended-take, murder-as-social-experiment exercise, or Vertigo, his lush exploration of psychosis and passion. Though speckled with a few lesser efforts, fine new transfers and a wealth of supplementary features (including 14 documentaries and some archival treasures) make it a relative bargain. So while you may not feel the need to repeatedly return to such uninspired efforts as Marnie, Topaz or Torn Curtain, true essentials abound.